REVIEWS


Motorway Reviewed by Mark Adams


A slickly shot action-thriller that could benefit from the pop- ularity of recent car-chase films such as Drive and the The Fast And The Furious series, Motorway is a smart bit of full- throttle entertainment that could find an eager audience with a love of all things action and automotive. The film bears all the hallmarks of its producer Johnnie To


— smooth kinetic action scenes, understated heroes and vil- lains and stylish directorial moments — and while the story is pretty straightforward and predictable Motorway (not the most inspired of titles) delivers plenty of tyre-screeching moments and moves with plenty of high-octane energy. Unlike Drive and The Fast And The Furious, this film


Iceberg Slim: Portrait Of A Pimp


Reviewed by Anthony Kaufman


The subtitle Portrait Of A Pimp is misleading. While the first half of first-time director Jorge Hinojosa’s look at the life of Robert Beck (aka Iceberg Slim) touches on his colourful life as a 1960s hustler, using and abusing women while dressed in pinstripes and smart fedoras, the rest of the film concerns his rise as a subcultural literary icon. While the latter gives dimension and complexity to the film’s more sensationalistic early parts, it also lags, leaving several key questions about Beck’s later years unanswered. For viewers who are not familiar with Beck, Hinojosa sets


up his importance with a host of articulate fans, including director Bill Duke, Ice-T (an executive producer on the film), and comedian Chris Rock, who calls Beck’s 1969 tome Pimp: The Story Of My Life “maybe my favourite book of all time”. The film charts Beck’s life from an impoverished boy who


was sexually abused by his mother, to his brief rise as a char- ismatic pimp with a healthy stable of prostitutes, to his trou- bled years in and out of prison, and finally, to his transformation as a legitimate author of widely read Street Lit. But Portrait Of A Pimp is not exactly an inspirational story of redemption. If Beck made it good in some ways, the film also suggests his publishing house exploited him, his wife tossed him out of the house, and his work remained misunderstood as a valorisation of pimping, not a critique. Portrait Of A Pimp suffers from the same confusion. With


so much talk of “hos”, from the likes of Ice-T, Snoop Dogg and Caucasian academics, it seems like an oversight that the film-makers do not relate the horrors that befell Beck’s pros- titutes. The film samples liberally from a 1970s television documentary in which a reformed, sometimes wild-eyed Beck discusses the hell of a prostitute’s life and his regrets as a pimp. But there is nothing in Hinojosa’s contemporary footage to suggests this sensitivity or awareness. When Beck goes straight, it adds a surprising twist to the


story — and refreshingly, some female voices in the form of his ex-wife and daughters as additional narrators. But the pace stalls with the film’s new emphasis on the struggles of being an author. It also raises, but never adequately addresses, the issue that Beck may not have given up many of his vices. And for those wanting a more penetrating account of the


pimping life, the documentary spends more time celebrating Iceberg Slim as a trailblazer than showing his faults. Moreo- ver, the film-makers cannot overcome the drawback of not being able to interview their subject, who died in 1992.


September 9, 2012 Screen International at Toronto 19 n TIFF DOCS


US. 2012. 90mins Director/screenplay Jorge Hinojosa Production company Final Level Entertainment International salesUTA, www.unitedtalent.com ProducersDanny Bresnik, Jeff Scheftel Executive producers Jorge Hinojosa, Ice-T Cinematography Kelly Jones EditorDanny Bresnik Main cast Ice-T, Chris Rock, SnoopDogg, Quincy Jones, Henry Rollins, Katt Williams


eschews celebrating the criminal fraternity and sticks on the side of law and order as it follows a pair of cops, Lo Fung (Wong), who is soon to retire, and eager rookie Chan Che- ung (a nicely determined Shawn Yue), who are part of Hong Kong police’s ‘Invisible Squad’, a unit that uses fast cars (Audis in this case) to chase speedsters. As is usually the case in such films, Lo Fung is counting the


days until he retires, but his past comes back to haunt him when legendary getaway driver Jiang Xin (Guo) arrives back in Hong Kong. He arranges to get himself caught in a speed- trap so he can set in motion a plan to spring his old partner- in-crime Huang Zhong (Li) from jail. Super-confident Cheung chases their getaway car, but is


humiliated when Xin leads him into an alley and a turn so tight no driver should be able to make. Xin manages this feat, which strikes a chord with Lo Fung who recalls he came up against the same drivers many years before. The third act sees Motorway switch into full-on action


mode as the police intensity to catch the bad guys is cranked up (Zhong happily kills any officer in his way). They are planning a jewellery heist, which sets up the film for the main car chase to take part in a packed underground car park before heading out onto a blessedly empty motorway. In many ways the film is similar to Walter Hill’s 1978 clas-


sic Driver, though Soi Cheang’s direction, while slick, lacks a colour palette or vivid shooting style to set it alongside that film, or even the recent retro-style hit Drive. But the cop pair- ing of Anthony Wong and Shawn Yue works rather well. The female characters are limited at best, with only Barbie


Hsu making an impact as a pool-playing surgeon, but in the end Motorway is more about the fast cars, screeching tyres and throbbing engines… and there are plenty of loving car shots to keep action-loving petrol-heads happy.


VANGUARD


HK-Chi. 2012. 85mins Director Soi Cheang Production companies Media Asia Films, Sil- Metropole Organization, Milkyway Image International sales Media AsiaDistribution, www.mediaasia.com Producer Johnnie To Executive producers John Chong, SongDai Co-producers Shirley Lau, Lorraine Ho, Ren Yue, Lam Ping Kwan Screenplay Joey O’Bryan, Szeto Kam Yuen, Francis Fung, based on the original story by O’Bryan Cinematography Yuen Man Fung, Chung To Tse EditorsDavid Richardson, Allen Leung Production designer Simon So Music Xavier Jamaux, Alex Gopher Main cast Shawn Yue, Anthony Wong,Guo Xiaodong, Barbie Hsu, Li Haitao, Lam Ka Tung, Michelle Ye, Josie Ho


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